by DAVID FLINT – WHILE celebrating the Queen’s extraordinary service in her seventy years on the throne and preparing to swear allegiance, too many politicians are wasting time plotting to do what their predecessors have always failed to do: to persuade Australians to say Yes to something they have firmly said No to.
Namely, to remove our oldest legal institution, the Australian Crown, the one part of our constitutional system which works efficiently and at minimal cost, with the Royal Family unpaid for their services.
- The monarch is an absolutely essential feature of a successful Westminster system.
- Many politicians claim it can work just as well without the monarchical element.
- Explain then why even the sophisticated French failed twice.
And just on that, do not believe the media untruth that British taxpayers fund the monarchy. The monarchy is in fact, self-funded.
Our politicians are not so effective that they can afford to waste more time on such a hopeless cause.
WORSE
In fact, I sometimes ask people if they can identify a serious national problem that, if it were not created by the politicians, has been not been made significantly worse by them. No one can ever think of one.
That the performance of our politicians is, with significant exceptions, seen as so poor, may well be because of the fact that among comparable countries, Australia has not only a ridiculously complicated voting system but also one wide open to fraud.
The result is that our out-of-touch, captured, two-Party system is over protected from the understandable wrath of the people.
Claimed to be superior to the Anglo-American first-past-the-post system, ours delivered government to a Party with a record low 32 per cent of the primary vote with 600,000 fewer votes than when it lost the 2019 election. And we won’t know the final results for weeks or even months.
What stands out in all this swamp is the monarch who has selflessly given us leadership beyond politics, an absolutely essential feature of a successful Westminster system.
Too many politicians claim that this can work just as well without the monarchical element.
Explain then why even the sophisticated French failed twice to make their Westminister republican facsimile work.
Those who would rush to tamper with the one part of the Australian constitutional system which is working well should reflect on a research finding that the reason why some countries are rich and successful is a question neither of geography, race, nor even natural wealth.
In their landmark study, Why Nations Fail, MIT Professors Daron Acemoglu and James A Morrison, conclude that the factor which determines success is a country’s political and economic institutions.
ELITE
Korea is an excellent example. In that once homogenous peninsula, the North has “extractive” institutions which concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite to arrange governance to suit that elite.
By way of contrast, the South has “inclusive” institutions which are pluralistic, democratic and open, “engines of prosperity” for the people.
Another example is between Australia and Argentina, which, at the time of the Federation, were the world’s richest countries.
But significant differences in their institutions subsequently resulted in periods of brutal dictatorship and economic decline.
Argentina now has a per capita GDP of less than half Australia’s.
As a former Argentinian minister said on ABC’s Four Corners, there is one important difference between the two counties: “Australia has British institutions. If Argentina had such strong institutions she would be like Australia in 10 or 20 years.”
The Westminster system centres on a constitutional monarchy producing leadership beyond politics, including in those realms where the Crown acts more often through viceroys such as Australia, Canada, Tuvalu and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
In the latter two, the people followed Australia in referendums rejecting a politicians’ republic.
Our system of course depends on monarchs of quality, which the Windsor family has been extraordinarily successful in producing with the system flexible enough to remove someone perceived as inappropriate, eg Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor.
SELF-INTEREST
According to a publication provided to Royal Military College Sandhurst cadets, while there are several tests of leadership, the one character trait a leader must have is being free from the slightest trait of self-interest.
In all these tests Elizabeth II passes with flying colours. As did her parents and her parents’ parents.
When I was a boy, the great unifying wartime symbol of the nation and the Empire was King George VI, especially because of his willingness to share the burdens and dangers of his people.
This was best demonstrated when it was suggested to the then Queen that during the Blitz, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret be sent to Canada just as other children were sent away from the capital.
The Queen replied: “They won’t go without me, I won’t go without the King, and the King will never leave.”
In Australia today and other realms, alongside the Queen, the viceroys – governors and governors-general – play much of the day-to-day role of the Crown.
REMOVE
The Queen (who personally enabled our complete independence) sets the standards which the viceroys follow and only she can appoint or remove one.
There is no guarantee how the Queen will act on advice which is questionable.
In one case a vice-regal dismissal was abandoned in favour of a resignation, the process taking two-and-a-half months.
One courtier’s opinion is that a recommendation of dismissal blocks a governor-general from dismissing a prime minister.
I disagree, relying on the position the Queen took on the dismissal of Gough Whitlam. As she pointed out, the Constitution vests this power in the Governor-General and it would be unconstitutional of her to act in that area.
Rather than wasting time on an unachievable politicians’ republic, our new government should restore something which might have prevented abuse during the pandemic – the proper examination we used to have of proposed regulations in the vice-regal-chaired Executive Councils as well as the disallowance power of upper houses.
They could also look into using the Royal Family internationally to advance our interests, especially commercial.
This would be highly appropriate when the new Royal Yacht is launched.PC
As we heard, Albanese is arguing for a change to a republic on the basis that Australia is now a mature country & deserves to be recognised in it’s own right.( not as a child of the British monarchy).
I would argue that Australia and other affected couuntries were changed to maturity when the British Empire became the Commonwealth of Nations in recognition of their maturity. So Albo’s argument is cancelled at that point.
As Philip B has said himself at the AGM of the AML – our current status is a system not a dependency on a motherland. As such our system gives us an apolitical adjudicator so that in a dispute between Govt & Opposition, the nation’s interests are sorted – apart from the will of those that would plunder our wealth for personal gain. It also puts the kybosh on those that would take over as dictators via a military coup, making our system more secure for the people & THEIR interests, rather than the ‘self servers’. States are in many ways mini republics, and look at the chaos that brought about because of the self interest activity of Premiers, in the areas of families and their interests. Our PM was fearful of acting out Commonwealth power over state disputes then, to an extent because the Puppet Masters of a state which shall remain nameless, but which could tap the PM on the shoulder as has happened so often by that currently Leftist ruled state – and I stress ‘Currently’. He was then criticised and blamed for everything that went wrong by the states – because of their bad leadership – and it ultimately cost him the election. That power, at least where Liberal leadership is concerned, is now vested in another state by the will of the people at the recent federal election! And no Ukrainian style conflict arose in the process – under the Westminster system!! Would anyone really wish it to have happened in other ways?
These are the finer points of our system – but as we saw during the recent election campaign, PM Albanese has difficulty with finer points. Things need to be very simple for him!! We have a long debate ahead.
The monarch is the UK’s head of state.
You people claim the GG is Australia’s head of state.
The GG is appointed by, acts for, and answers to the monarch ( that is, the UK’s head of state).
So Australia’s head of state is inferior and subordinate to the UK’s head of state.
We are the Commonwealth Of Australia . And a republic would only destroy us and allow Government to be worse than the tyrannical bastards they have become with the Scam Demic . Our Constitution is what makes us what we are and if not for that we all would have been coerced in JAB JAB until we had been culled . ALP = CCP . God Save The Queen . As nothing will save ANAL (ALBO).
The constitution is broken.
Ms Windsor broke it in 1975, when she unilaterally decided that the monarch’s representative does not answer to the monarch.
Alas the pomp and pageantry of the last week were more about securing the royal seal of approval for the dictatorial new world order than showcasing confidence in Her Majesty’s Westminster constitutional system.
Prince Charles lends his profile to the joint WEF/UN/Corporate stakeholder dystopian pandemic/climate agendas for world governance. On their retirement as working Royals, Harry and Meghan immediately became close to anti-Constitutional elements in America and remain so as orchestrated school shootings and police stand downs threaten law-abiding Americans citizens’ Second Amendment rights to self-protection..
And while two smiling Canadian Mounties saw Her Majesty out of and into the royal Landrover at the Platinum equine themed tribute at Windsor, Canadian law now requires everyday Canadians to surrender their legally licensed guns and ammo at the behest of WEF Young Global Leader and apple of Claus Schwab’s eye, minority Prime Minister Justin Castro Trudeau.
At the very heart of Westminster Constitutional Government, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has egregiously broken his contract with the Briish people. Today after surviving a Party vote of no confidence 202 to 148, he shamefully and unworkablely clings to office rather than step down.
And as politicians and global stakeholders routinely mask up to feebly defend the indefensible, the mainstream media continue to support the masquerade.
Worse still in Australia, the 1946 Commonwealth referendum that delivered the people’s watertight rejection of medical conscription has all but been erased from public memory. Our elites’ treacherous embrace of Global State of Emergency governance now trumps our purportedly successful Westminster System which should have no truck with today’s globalist overlords.
After watching the result of the home country, celebrating her Seventy year reign and from so many commonwealth countries as well! The most noticed was that Australia Corporation was not mentioned! The Australian commonwealth was missing in action thanks to this “poisoned Chalice of an election system” Organized and run by a two party system of corrupt politicians and their corrupt media platforms! Which is rarely mentioned in our media even when happening in other western countries 🙁 Time we stopped the sport and beer guzzling TV ads and called for real journalism from the crooked media we are all paying for along with support from crooked governments 🙁 Australians don’t like to be taken or robbed and here we are allowing it constantly! Why 🙁
Ms Windsor needs to account for her gutless cop out in 1975.
The GG is appointed by the monarch, acts for the monarch, and answers to the monarch. Her shameful attempt to distance herself from her representative’s actions was despicable.
She betrayed our constitution, trashed the chain of command, and exposed herself as a spinless coward.